Category: The Dish

The story that president Bush volunteered to go to Vietnam depends on … president Bush and one of his friends. Here’s the relevant part of a 2000 piece that deals with the issue:

"’Had my unit been called up, I’d have gone … to Vietnam,’ Bush said. ‘I was prepared to go.’ But there was no chance Bush’s unit would be ordered overseas. Bush says that toward the end of his training in 1970, he tried to volunteer for overseas duty, asking a commander to put his name on the list for a ‘Palace Alert’ program, which dispatched qualified F-102 pilots in the Guard to the Europe and the Far East, occasionally to Vietnam, on three- to six-month assignments.
He was turned down on the spot. ‘I did [ask] ‚Äì and I was told, ‘You’re not going,” Bush said.
Only pilots with extensive flying time – at the outset, 1,000 hours were required – were sent overseas under the voluntary program. The Air Force, moreover, was retiring the aging F-102s and had ordered all overseas F-102 units closed down as of June 30, 1970."

There’s no paper record. But Fred wasn’t hallucinating. He’d just absorbed what the president had said and repeated it, with a benign spin. That’s a pretty good description of his book, actually.

It’s the fastest growing global version of fundamentalist Christianity. And it will be a mere 100 years’ old this year. One of the most successful American exports ever, one of its theological innovations is the "prosperity gospel" where personal wealth is actually a sign of God’s blessing rather than, as Jesus taught, an obstacle to holiness. These movements are increasingly the political ideologies of our time. We need to understand them much better than we do.

Some on the hard right would have you believe that checking the executive’s power is somehow a left-liberal project. It may be; but it’s also a project that many conservatives, worried about an unnecessarily intrusive government, should be deeply involved in. I favor aggressive attempts to hunt down our enemy; I’d be fine with NSA wiretapping with warrants; I’d be in favor of re-vamping FISA to make it compatible with modern technology. The choice is not, in other words, between doctrinaire civil libertarians and hard-ass terrorist-hunters. It’s between providing a sliver of accountability and providing none. Mercifully, plenty in the administration recognized this. Predictably, they’ve all been purged.

I have read the first encyclical closely now; and it’s clearly some of Benedict’s finest work. I’ve posted a few of extracts – his critique of Christianity’s tendency to abhor the body, his understanding of the limits of politics, his connection between eros and agape – that strike me as particularly eloquent. I’m still saddened by the absence of philia in the document, although one reader suggests that that’s a function of Benedict’s belief that true philia is impossible for Christians among non-Christians. Here’s my correspondent’s elaboration of Ratzinger’s earlier work, "The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood," in this regard:

"Now, this does not mean that one should be cruel toward non-Christians. On the contrary, Christians are obligated toward their non-Christian fellows in a three-fold manner. First, there’s ‘missionary activity.’ Second, there is agape, which has two forms: a) ‘the relations of Christians among one another should have an attractive and exemplary force,’ and b) to ‘follow the work of the Lord who performed his work of love for those who neither knew nor loved him (see Rom 5:6), directing their love to all those who need them, without asking for thanks or a response.’ And finally, the "last and highest mission of the Christian in relation to non-believers is to suffer for them and in their place as the Master did.’ (pp. 81-83)

At any rate, I suspect that Benedict’s decision not to speak of philia has to do with the fact understanding it contains a harsh truth: that there are insurmountable difference between Christians and non-Christians (and even Catholics and non-Catholics). For what seem to me altogether sensible political reasons, I think Benedict chose not to emphasize the somewhat exclusive quality of the Church."

That helps. Benedict’s aversion to Aquinas also helps explain the absence of philia from the encyclical.

At the same time, I have to say I’m struck by the references in the document. It’s pretty stunning to me that Benedict should cite Plato’s Symposium for his definition of eros. This sentence is mind-blowing:

"That love between man and woman which is neither planned nor willed, but somehow imposes itself upon human beings, was called eros by the ancient Greeks."

Er, not exactly. For the Greeks, eros meant a kind of longing. Plato saw it as bound up in the search for truth, as well as for beauty. But also – critically – it describes same-sex love as well as opposite-sex love. The Symposium, the source of Benedict’s description of eros, treats same-sex love interchangeably with opposite-sex love, and the myth cited by Aristophanes even places same-sex erotic love on a higher plane than mere heterosexuality. (I’m even hoping to use the passage in my own marriage service, and began my anthology on gay marriage by citing it.) Benedict must know this. He’s a deeply learned man. Why rest his own treatment on sources that clearly embrace gay love? Beats me. He even cites Virgil’s Eclogues, a deeply homoerotic work. Part of me thinks that Benedict’s anti-gay posture is just orthodoxy, made more reactionary by the social revolution of our time. And then I wonder if he doesn’t have an esoteric meaning as well. Nothing in this encyclical couldn’t apply to same-sex eros; his bigoted Instruction has helped expose the fact that the Church is a deeply homosexual institution, and in the West, at least, there’s no real attempt (so far) to purge gay seminarians and priests. Maybe the Instruction’s unpersuasive and naked bigotry is esoterically designed to advance the argument that gay people are obviously not "objectively disordered" in such a way to render them unfit for the priesthood. Is Benedict quietly showing the validity of same-sex eros and equal dignity of same-sex eros, even while publicly denouncing it? Or have I read too much Leo Strauss? Probably the latter.

Children, chains, blood, and mullahs. Another day of Jihad.

Remember that instantly iconic photograph of the American soldier in Iraq, covered in mud and sweat, smoking a newly-lit cigarette? He’s back home now.

"In this world full of culturally charged issues I think we should make it clear that Senator McCain and I are not married," – president Bill Clinton, at Davos.

Fred Barnes is an excellent reporter, at least he was when I worked with him. He’s also a terrific guy. But his complete capitulation to the Karl Rove Kool-Aid is beginning to make him sound, well, silly. Check out this bizarre exchange on the Diane Rehm show:

DR:  What about the president’s own service in the military?

FB:  Well, he didn’t shirk.  He joined the national guard.  At one time, it’s reported–I don’t know whether–I have not myself personally confirmed this–that he volunteered for Vietnam and was turned down.  He volunteered–

DR:  Turned down?

FB:  He was a flier.  Well, he wasn’t in a unit that would get him over there or something.  It’s been, it’s been widely reported–

DR:  Fred, where’d that come from?  I’ve never heard that before.

FB:  Oh sure.  What?  That he’d–

DR:  That he volunteered to go to Vietnam.

FB:  He volunteered for Vietnam duty and didn’t get there.  I don’t think I’m making this up.

DR:  Can you cite me some evidence on that?

FB:  I thought it was quite widely known.

DR:  Never heard that one before.

FB:  Really? Well, I’ve heard it many, many times.

Bubble, anyone? Or is there some evidence for this out there?

A reader takes me to task:

I am writing in response to the powerful irony of the tag line that runs across the top of your site and your recent postings of unthinking, dehumanizing, brief and lyrical references to disability.

I am a 30 year-old woman born with what is commonly recognized as limited mobility. Even this phrase is irksome because I have yet to meet the individual who could flap his arms and fly. I like it better because disability can mean so many things and it lacks descriptive power. This is a lesson you no doubt learned when you started getting all those questions.

More than anything else, I think, literary imagination forms public perception of the disabled. According to popular language we lead lives that are alternatively manipulative, wretched or inspirational. Everything we say or do is a function of our physical difference from the norm. The language you posted reinforces and recreates this fiction.

First off, you wrote that the disabled person was behaving as though the disability were not there. Though you have never discussed the disability, you presume to know just exactly how that physical reality impacts behavior. What this statement reveals is that you have particular expectations for disabled humans. As soon as your expectations are proved wrong, you speak of remarkable-ness and inspiration. God, the man wrote a whole article without mentioning that he is disabled, he is a saint!!!

Is everything you write a function of being gay?

The emailer who wrote of "blissful ignorance" reminds me of all the people who approach me on the street to ask if I want help, approach me on a staircase and urgently offer to escort me to the elevator, or to offer me The Lord’s Blessing for having the courage to carry on. Clearly, the sight of a person moving slowly and not in the usual way disturbs the bliss of many.

Depictions in the media typically use disabilty as a device, and in so doing, dehumanize. Forrest Gump is on TV tonight. In it you will see a scene where a young person with leg braces tries to run from a gang of boys who through rocks at him. They mean him harm. But the braces magically shatter, and low and behold he can run faster than anyone! You see, he just wasn’t trying hard enough.

A few nights ago, there was an episode of Law and Order CSI where the murderer was in a wheelchair, but he wasn’t really wheelchair-bound, he was just using that to get pity. Remember Seinfeld? George gave all his officemates the opportunity to show off their excellent manners by pretending to require use of a scooter.

In closing I will leave you with this thought. In my own house with no company, my disability is a non-issue. It is beyond my imagination to think that my life would be so very much better were I able to move differently. It is only when the outside world starts demanding that each and every task must be completed in only one way that a different physical experience of the world becomes a disability, becomes a true limitation.

Since it will no doubt be on your mind, if you have ever seen E.R., I use a cane just like the one Carrie Weaver uses. And just in passing, that no one ever leaps in front of her to open a door before she can get to it is a fiction, too."

I’m grateful for the email.